A Different Decision
by Bookaholic346
Summary: Itachi's life could have taken so many different roads. In one life, he fulfilled his duty and slaughtered his clan, but he refused to kill his little brother. What if the gravity of the situation had weighed too heavily on him to accept that mission? What if Itachi declined and made a different decision to save who could be saved? COMPLETE. Sequel in progress.
1. Prologue

Things were spiralling. Everything was slipping so far out of his control that he wasn't even sure which way was up and which way was down anymore. The word 'loyalty' was sloshing around like water, and the more people said it, the more people whispered it urgently in his ear, the more they angrily demanded it from him, the more they questioned him of it, the further away the word seemed to get. What was loyalty? He had the aching feeling that he had once had a very clear definition in his grasp, but now it had escaped him.

Loyalty.

To his family. His clan. To the community of people that raised him, praised him as he rose through the ranks. The people that smiled at him as he ran down the street on his way home from the Academy, the people that accepted him as their own, unconditionally.

Loyalty.

To his village. His wider family. Every man, woman and child that dwelt within the Leaf's walls that he had sworn to protect the moment that he tied on his hitai-ate and become part of something that was so much bigger than him. To the village, he was a comrade, a protector. One of their own that they accepted no matter what family he came from.

He wasn't going to lie and say that either the village or his clan was perfect. But he didn't want them to be. They were living, breathing organisms made up of individual human lives. If humans weren't perfect, why should he demand that their communities be? Perfection was not his end game, it was harmony. The two were fundamentally different.

So what was really important to him? It was clear that perfection was an impossible dream. It was also becoming increasingly clear that harmony was just as distant. His clan and his village were in conflict, and the natures of both meant that peaceful resolution was just a fairy tale. Should he side with the clan and protect the people that he loves most in the world? Or should he side with the village, and prevent the war that he can sense building, riding on the cusp of the Uchiha's betrayal? The choice should be simple, and the man standing in front of him was very blunt in his statement of the reality of his situation. He has offered Itachi an out: a compromise, something to preserve the honour of his clan and the peace of his village, but at a terrible cost.

"There is no one else to turn to but you." Danzo looked at him with his hard, cold eyes. "You alone can cleanse the sins of your family and stabilize the village." There was a firmness in his voice. Itachi was ANBU, and Danzo was his commander. This was an order, albeit a horrific one, but an order nevertheless.

"I know my family is guilty." Itachi began slowly. The words choked him up. He was finally admitting it out loud. His family was very guilty of the crime that Danzo was ordering him to execute them for. He was finally admitting to both himself and Danzo that the power to save them had slipped out of his grasp. Itachi felt lost. His clan was going to die, whether he struck the blows or not. Nothing would change.

"Their crime is high treason." Danzo said simply. "And it is the custom of the village that high treason is dealt with by team mates and family of the accused. It is your duty to protect your village against those closest to you who have turned against us."

Itachi glared out of his mask, sharingan swirling angrily. "You would have me kill them all. The whole clan: men, women… _children_."

Danzo did not flinch. He looked at Itachi with stony features. "If you do not dispose of them all, the village will wonder. They will start to poke holes in your motive, wondering if it was just a case of a rouge ANBU going mad… or whether the family had dark secrets that their very loyal, seemingly nice ANBU relative was putting to rights." Danzo sniffed. "The people aren't stupid, as much as it appears so most of the time. If you spare the innocent, the village will put two and two together and realise that you were razing traitors, not turning on your family in a fit of mad rage."

Itachi's lips tightened, pressing together into a flat white line. His mask felt very heavy, like the duty that it symbolised was literally weighing him down. He pictured the people that he had to kill. His aunts, uncles, cousins, his mother, father and…..

"No." The word bubbled to his lips almost immediately. "This is something that I cannot do."

Danzo's eyes narrowed. "Then you are no better than-!"

Itachi held up a hand, cutting off Danzo's rant. He knew the old man had to feel the rage and killing intent that was radiating off his body right now. "My loyalty lies with the village." He said firmly. Deep in his heart, that was his answer. The village was more important to him than the clan. The clan as a whole had decided to protect the village when they joined, right at the very beginning. He himself had entered into that binding contract of loyalty when he graduated the Academy and became a genin. It was a doubly binding oath, one that he had sworn gladly.

Danzo's face looked like a thundercloud. Itachi tried to ignore the lump of dread that was starting to accumulate in the depths of his stomach. He was going to anger one of the most dangerous men in Konoha. Not a good plan, but what else was he supposed to do?

"My loyalty will always be to Konoha." Itachi told the man firmly. "My kin have committed a grave sin. I will not interfere in the village's actions against the guilty. To do so would mark me just as much a traitor as them." His shoulders straightened. "What I will not do is commit the injustice of taking out punishment on the innocent for the crimes of their elders. None of the children so much as even suspect what is brewing in the clan. I am a shinobi. I will stain my hands if the village asks me to. But if the village asks me to turn on innocent children within its own borders and protection, then I am no longer sure that this is the village that I thought I was serving."

Danzo was quiet. "Nobility and justice get nobody anywhere." He spat back at Itachi. "We are shinobi, not honour driven samurai. We live and breathe in the shadows."

"Some shadows are too dark to draw breath in." Itachi said back flatly. "This is the line that I will not cross. Do not ask me to."

Danzo glowers, but Itachi can see now that the man has realised that he is arguing a lost cause. He will not try to order Itachi to shoulder this burden again. He was going to have to find an alternate solution. Itachi was secretly pleased. Danzo was going to have to bow to the Hokage, and follow the route of negotiation and peaceful resolution that Sarutobi stubbornly clung to. If all else failed, there would be a purging, but not a secret one. This one would air the Uchiha's dirty laundry for the whole village to see. Itachi grimly accepted that. The Uchiha would fall from favour, and they would fall _hard_.

But Sasuke would be safe, and that's all that Itachi cared about. Better scorned and whispered about than dead due to their parents' mistake. He would suffer, but Itachi would make sure that he was there to shield his brother from the worst of it.

Because when it came down to it, Sasuke was the line that he would not cross.


	2. Chapter 1

Itachi bore it all in silence. For the next few weeks, it would seem as if nothing had changed. His father would still not speak to him. His mother was still frosty, but needy, as if she could guilt Itachi into switching his stance. The rest of the clan kept their distance from him. Despite the proof that said otherwise, most still believed him responsible for his best friend's death. He tried to focus on his ANBU work. He was still monitoring the situation for the Hokage, and day by day it was becoming clearer that his father and the clan were all but ready and committed to their plan. His ANBU colleagues were becoming edgy. Their battle honed instincts were telling them that violence was on the horizon. Most of them were ignorant to the true extent of the Uchihas' plot, only knowing that the Uchiha were a family that the Hokage had ordered them to keep an eye on. This in itself was not that unusual, there was always someone under surveillance in Konoha. Politics meant that there was always one internal group or the like classified as a potential risk to the village. Rarely did those suspicions actually bear fruit. It seemed, like always, the Uchiha had proven to be the ones a cut above the rest.

Itachi tried to seek comfort in the little things. He distanced himself from the clan to avoid unnecessary friction, and focussed his attention on the one person who was always happy to hold it. Sasuke was confused at the climate of the clan. Itachi could tell that their parents' behaviour towards his older brother was putting him very much on edge. He did his best to put him at ease, distracting him by helping him with his training away from the glares of their family. Sasuke wasn't stupid though. He could tell something big was brewing, and it was scaring him. The few nights that Itachi found himself sleeping at home as opposed to crashing in one of the bunks at the ANBU headquarters he had been woken up by the moans and thrashing of his little brother's nightmares in the room next door.

-0-0-0-0- 

The air was thick and strange as Itachi returned to ANBU headquarters one Friday afternoon. He had just completed a particularly brutal mission that had lasted the better part of three days and he was tired. He was, however, thankful that they had managed to catch the dangerous fugitive they were after a lot faster than predicted. It meant that he would now have the weekend off, spending time with Sasuke, instead of running through the mud fighting until he was ready to drop.

He dismissed his tired team with a grimace, ordering them to go home and not come back until Monday. The last thing he wanted was for their superiors to notice that they had finished ahead of schedule and squeeze another assignment into their weekend. He dumped his gear in his locker and slammed it shut with conviction, thankful to ditch the mask for a little while. He nearly managed to gracefully manoeuvre all the way to the door, only to almost slip on a shirt that had slipped out of someone's locker without anyone noticing. Cursing he snatched up the shirt and glared around the locker room, meeting the eyes of each person in the vicinity and holding up the shirt.

One of the older ANBU, a man in his mid-twenties with a cross-shaped scar on his neck and a bear mask in his hands rolled his eyes at the shirt. "Belongs to the newbie on squad C." He told Itachi. "He's still unused to the pace that we have to gear up."

Itachi nodded his understanding, his annoyance giving way to sympathy. He shook the shirt and made a move to fold it up. He would leave it on one of the locker room benches, out of the way of the Shinobi trying to get into their gear. A moment into his task, he froze. There, emblazoned on the back of the black shirt, was the red and white fan of his clan. All of his breathing stopped, and he turned back to the man with the Bear mask.

"The new recruit is an Uchiha?" Itachi waved the symbol at the other ninja, trying to keep his voice steady.

Bear blinked at him. "We thought you knew?" He said. "Surely the fact that another Uchiha genius made it into ANBU is circling your compound? He's been here nearly three weeks."

Itachi stared down at the shirt. "I've been kind of busy lately." He said slowly. "Not much opportunity to hear the clan gossip, you know…."

A Yamanaka woman on his right murmured her agreement. "I know what you mean! Being an ANBU agent meant that I missed the fact that one of my cousin's got engaged! I only found out the morning that my mother turned up at my apartment demanding to know why I wasn't ready to attend the ceremony yet."

There was a wave of groans and chuckles from the ANBU all around, everyone knew what it was like. Being an ANBU agent wasn't exactly a good thing for a person's social life.

Itachi decided to leave the matter alone. He should be happy that another of his family was moving up in the world. Maybe this was a sign that the family was negotiating with the Hokage. Demanding that more of their family were allowed into the elite units of the village was certainly something that he could see his father doing. It was a demand that Itachi could also see the Hokage agreeing to gladly. He hastily folded up the shirt and turned to leave.

"Hey, Itachi…" He was almost out the door when he was addressed once again by Bear. The man had caught up to him, lowering his voice and dropping into a serious tone. "The new kid, can you look out for him back at your clan compound?"

Itachi raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

Bear shrugged. "Kid's only fifteen, which is nothing against your record, but still pretty young for ANBU. He's still trying to adjust to all of… this…" Itachi grimaced. He knew exactly what the older boy was going through, joining ANBU was a real eye opener. "Some of us reckon that he isn't coping too well. He looks like he's under a lot of pressure already. And I think he's just been given his first solo. He came in here about ten minutes before you did looking really pale and nervous. He strapped on his gear so quickly that he didn't even give most of us the time to say hi." Bear nodded towards him. "His name's Yoshiki, can you keep an eye out for him? Maybe check up on him later?"

Itachi frowned. "I know him." He told Bear quietly. "I'll go see if he's okay later." Bear gave his thanks, and Itachi left, the feeling of dread within him growing.

He dwelt on Yoshiki as he trudged home, trying to recall every detail he knew about him. To his knowledge, Yoshiki and his family were fringe dwellers of the clan. His father had died in action years ago and his mother was a civilian who had married into the family. Yoshiki was a little famous inside the clan for graduating early, though not as early as Itachi himself. From what he knew of Yoshiki, the boy certainly had the skills to be in ANBU. He had activated his Sharingan when he was six, the day the news of his father's death had reached them, and he had made chunin by age eleven.

But it wasn't his skills that worried Itachi. Most members of the Uchiha clan were talented enough to survive in ANBU, even if just barely in some cases. What worried Itachi was that Yoshiki was a fringe dweller Uchiha. He was the perfect person for Danzo to recruit from the clan; his ties of loyalty were most likely to be much stronger to the village, where his mother's relatives all dwelt. The only thing that tied Yoshiki to the clan was the memory of his father and his sharingan eyes.

Dread filled Itachi with each step towards his family compound as the pieces fit together. Today was a Friday so most of the clan would be relaxing and celebrating the end of the working week. Tonight would be the perfect moment for Danzo to launch his eradication tactic. There was also the fact that Yoshiki had been assigned to ANBU three weeks ago, just after Itachi had refused that same mission from Danzo. To make matters even more suspicious, Bear had told him that Yoshiki had appeared to be under a lot more stress than a normal new recruit, and that it looked like he had a solo mission today.

Itachi began to shake. A new thought had occurred to him. The mission that he was supposed to be on all weekend had been assigned to them by Danzo. Unless he was paranoid, the man had tried to get him out of the village to prevent him from interfering.

The evidence was mounting, and so was Itachi's horror. There would be no peaceful resolution after all. Unless he was mistaken (and he so rarely was), tonight Yoshiki Uchiha would go mad under the pressure of his new job in ANBU and take out his frustrations on the clan that had always kept him at a distance because of his mother's civilian station. Or so the official stories would say. In truth, Yoshiki would slaughter the clan on Danzo's orders and disappear, leaving the village to jump to their own conclusions about the tragic fate of the Uchiha.

_Sasuke._ Itachi's first thought was to grab Sasuke and run. He was still a loyal member of the village. If he took Sasuke away for the night and returned when it was all over, they could avoid the fate of their relatives. In his heart though, Itachi knew this would not work. It might alert his parents to the fact that something was up, potentially interfering with Yoshiki's mission. He had promised Danzo that he would not interfere when the guilty of his clan were punished. He had no intention of breaking that promise.

_And what about everyone else?_

Itachi felt cold. Yoshiki was definitely under orders to kill every member of the clan, children included. Was Itachi detached enough to leave all of the other innocent children in his family to die while he selfishly saved his little brother? A part of him was that cold, he'd admit it, but the part that desperately wanted to save Sasuke was also screaming at him to do something or he'd regret it for the rest of his life. Another part of it was that he knew that Sasuke would be disappointed in him if he didn't try to save other children too, and right now, he couldn't bear to lose Sasuke's respect, it was the only thing he had left.

Before he knew it, he was standing in the entranceway of his house, still no closer to deciding what he was going to do than when he realised what was going to happen.

"I'm home." He called out softly, more out of habit than anything else. His mother didn't really welcome him back anymore, and his father didn't speak to him.

A happy face popped around the corner of the hallway. "Welcome back!" Sasuke grinned at him and trotted over. He was holding a pen in his left hand; obviously Itachi's arrival had interrupted his homework time. "Mother and Father aren't here." Sasuke smiled at him mischievously. "I think they're at Aunt Miyako's for dinner. They left some food for me, but we can make something together if you want." He looked up at him hopefully. "Something with lots of those cherry tomatoes that mother bought yesterday... please?"

Itachi would have liked nothing better than to ruffle his hair, poke his forehead for being so naughty as to suggest that they raid the fridge for the good food and proceed to spoiling him rotten for the rest of the evening, but the smothering feeling of dread that was still clinging to him made him clench his fist at his sides and stop. Sasuke frowned at him, confused by his hesitancy.

"Nii-san?" He took a step forward to tug at Itachi's sleeve.

In that moment, the decision was made. Itachi knelt down to reach Sasuke's eye level and gripped both his shoulders in his hands. "Listen to me very carefully now Sasuke, okay?" His voice was low, serious and urgent. Sasuke immediately stiffened at the tone, eyes wide. "Sasuke, do you trust me?"

"Of course!" His reply was indignant and instantaneous.

"Do you think that you can do some things for me, trusting that I know what I'm doing, with absolute precision?"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "Like a mission?"

"Yes. Exactly like that. I'm giving you a mission, and it's a very serious one." Itachi was thankful that their parents were such believers in making sure that their children were very much aware of the shinobi life. Sasuke understood what it meant to be on a mission, and Itachi could use that to his advantage.

"What do you want me to do?" Sasuke's voice was quiet. Itachi wanted to cry. The tone of his brother's voice told him that Sasuke trusted him totally. It was more than he deserved. He was so thankful to have such a wonderful little brother.

"Listen carefully." He said. "In a moment, you're going to put on your shoes and you're going to go around the houses of everyone in the clan compound who has a child that isn't a genin yet." Itachi paused to let Sasuke digest this instruction. "Can you remember who they all are?"

Sasuke frowned. "I think so, there aren't that many children my age, and we play together sometimes, so I know where everyone lives."

"Good, I want you to visit them all and convince them to come on a spontaneous camping trip with you."

"Huh?"

"Free camping: roughing it in the wild. Sleeping under the stars and all that. Its summer, and you guys have done it before."

"Not on this short notice! And usually one of the adults comes with us!"

"I know. This is where you're going to have to lie. You can't tell them that I'm organising this trip, most of the clan doesn't like me right now. I want you to lie and swap the story of who is supervising you between Uncle Taro, Uncle Kuro and Uncle Kurei. Got that?"

"Uncle Taro, Uncle Kuro and Uncle Turei." Sasuke counted them off on his fingers and made a face. "They all sound so similar!"

Itachi smiled. "That's the point. If any of the adults talk after you've gone and compare stories, if the names don't match up they'll just assume they misheard. It will create confusion about who exactly was supposed to be watching over the kids."

"Oh." Sasuke nodded. "Okay. That makes sense."

"Right, tell them one of those three names, and if anyone asks why such a sudden camping trip is being organised, I want you to put on your best cute child face and tell people that you're trying to cheer people up because everyone seems so gloomy lately."

Sasuke bit his lip. "It really is gloomy around here Nii-san, hardly anyone smiles anymore. Are you finally going to tell me what's going on?"

Itachi sighed. "I'm sorry Sasuke, just be patient just a little while longer. I promise that I'll tell you tonight."

His little brother looked annoyed at this answer, but didn't talk back. "Right, what do I do when I have all the kids?"

"I want you to send the kids straight to our house as soon as you get them to agree to the camping trip. It's important that you're not roaming all over the compound as a group, or the adults will see that you're up to something. Try not to take no for an answer, be really insistent that everyone joins in this time."

"You want _all_ of the clan kids to come on the camping trip?"

"All of them." Itachi said firmly. "Sasuke, please: Get as many as you can without looking suspicious. I want you to bring the Academy kids older than you, even if they act too cool to hang out with little kids. I want you to convince parents to let their four year olds tag along. You won't be able to convince any parents to part with any kid under four for the night, but it will have to do. Hopefully that won't be a problem later." _In other words, hopefully Yoshiki will spare those that are clearly too young to be a threat._ "Sasuke, I'm really counting on you. The whole clan loves and trusts you as the son of the head. You need to exploit that."

Sasuke took a deep breath. "I won't let you down brother." He said grimly. "I'll convince them."

"Thank you." Itachi swept him up into a hug. "I knew I could count on you Sasuke."

His brother hugged him back, hands clutching the back of his shirt tightly. Itachi knew that Sasuke had sensed his desperation through his orders. He was getting the vibe that this 'mission' that his big brother had given him might be a whole lot more important that he was letting on.

"What about Mother and Father?" Sasuke released him slowly. "Won't they be surprised to come back and find most of the clan's children in our house?"

"Did they tell you when they were coming back?"

Sasuke shrugged. "They left dinner for me to eat, and Aunt Miyako runs her household like clockwork, so if I'm right and they're eating at her place, they won't be back until at least seven."

Itachi bit his lip. "I'm not sure, but I can always try and relocate people as they arrive, but hopefully we'll all be out… camping… by five. It's about half past three now, do you think you can get everyone here by five?"

Sasuke nodded. "There aren't that many kids in the clan." He pointed out. "And I don't think very many parents will object to the camping trip, even if it's last minute. They all love it when we play together; something about clan solidarity."

Itachi smiled, sitting back on his heels. "You, my dear little brother, are going to be one hell of a shinobi one day. I can tell."

Sasuke just beamed at him, chest swelling in pride. Itachi meant every word. Sasuke had listened to him with the maturity and intelligence of an adult. He had instinctively grasped the seriousness of the situation, and was actively thinking ahead about future problems in their little 'operation'. Itachi had no doubt that he would be able to go out into the compound in a few minutes and charm the socks off every member of their family without raising suspicion. He was the perfect ally for Itachi to have on his side right now.

Sasuke eyed his sandals, neatly tucked away in the corner of the entranceway that they had been standing in. "I'd better go now if we want everyone gathered by five." He told Itachi. He handed Itachi the pen that had been forgotten in his hand until now and crammed his feet into his sandals. He gave a small wave at Itachi before darting out the door. "I'll be back soon!"

Itachi breathed a sigh of relief, now that Sasuke was off on his errand he could start putting himself together for the long night ahead. He needed to make sure that he was prepared, because the kids that he was going to be in charge of for the night most certainly wouldn't be.


	3. Chapter 2

Itachi was waiting in the kitchen when the first child knocked on their door. Carefully checking to make sure that he looked as casual as possible, Itachi slowly got up from the kitchen table and made his way to the entrance way to let the kid in.

He opened the door to the wary look of one of his second cousins, a boy named Hideki that was about seven years old, a year younger than Sasuke. The boy looked nervous as soon as he saw that it was Itachi that opened the door, and took a half-step back like he wanted to run. He ducked his head at Itachi, trying to hide behind his shaggy dark brown hair. "Uh… Sasuke said…."

Itachi did his best to smile encouragingly him. "Sasuke told you to come here, right?" He prompted the boy gently. "He said he was organising some sort of camping trip, and that a lot of kids were going to be turning up on our doorstep."

Hideki looked up at him in relief and nodded eagerly. "Sasuke said that everyone was going to meet at his house before we went camping."

Itachi stepped aside, waving Hideki into his home. "Come on in then, we can wait in the living room for everyone else to arrive." He tried to smile again, but he wasn't totally sure that the expression was having the calming effect he was hoping for. Hideki nervously ducked through the doorway, politely took off his shoes and made to follow Itachi to the living room.

They had barely sat down when there was another knocking at the door, a somewhat livelier tap this time around, and Itachi excused himself to the quiet Hideki so that he could go answer the door again. He padded down the hall at a quicker pace than one would expect for a dignified Uchiha, but he wanted to usher the children into the house and off the street as soon as possible; he didn't want his neighbours to start wondering why so many children had suddenly decided to congregate at the head's household.

He opened the door not to one child this time, but three. An eleven year old Academy girl with her dark red hair tied up in a braid clutching the hand of her five year old brother, her nine year old brother hovering at her back. She smiled at Itachi brightly and informed him that Sasuke had told them to come over to the house in order to meet up for a camping trip. It took a moment before Itachi groggily pulled up their names from the depths of his memory, it had been quite a while since he had been around the children of the clan. The girl was Haruna, the one clutching her hand had to be little Samuru, and the other boy was Arata. He welcomed them into the house and took them to sit with Hideki, who looked very relieved to have company.

Over the course of an hour, eight more children arrived, all telling him the same story of Sasuke's camping trip. None of them seemed suspicious that anything else was going on, and he ushered them all into the living room to wait together. Doing a head count and mentally accounting for every child of the clan, Itachi realised that Sasuke had managed to pull through for him better than he had hoped. If he wasn't wrong, the room was only missing three children under the age of twelve and above the age of four that the clan possessed, and one of them was Sasuke, who was surely going to join them soon.

"I'm back!" Itachi couldn't help but breathe a quiet sigh of relief. Sasuke had returned, and he sounded triumphant. Ducking his way out of the living room, Itachi jogged over to the entranceway to greet his brother with a smile.

Sasuke wasn't alone, he had in tow behind him the two other children that Itachi had accounting missing in his head count earlier, as well as three extras. One of the two missing children, a six year old girl with short and spiky black hair ducked his head shyly at him and murmured her greeting, but the other, a ten year old with shoulder length black hair and a scowl, was clutching at the hands of two identical brunette toddlers. Clutching at Sasuke's shorts, thumb in her mouth and light brown hair hanging over her onyx eyes, was another toddler.

The boy with the scowl gave Itachi an apologetic look. "Mom wouldn't let me go if I didn't take the twins with me." He explained. "She said that a night in the woods wouldn't hurt them, and they're nearly three, so they shouldn't be too much of a pain."

Sasuke turned to Itachi. "I told them it was okay if the little kids came too, is it alright?"

Itachi smiled down at the toddlers. "Of course it's fine. You're not going anywhere dangerous, and I was tagging along with the other kids by the time I was their age anyway."

The boy with the scowl (Matsu, his name was if Itachi remember correctly) thanked Itachi and tugged the wide eyed twins towards the living room, where the sound of the other kids laughing and chatting was coming from. The six year old girl ducked her head at Sasuke and Itachi again and followed along behind, leaving Sasuke, Itachi and the last toddler alone in the hallway.

Itachi looked down at her, then back up to Sasuke, a questioning look on his face. Sasuke reached down and untangled her hand from his shorts, securing it in his own hand instead. "This is Eri." He told Itachi. "She's Hanae's daughter, Matsu's neighbour. When she saw that we were taking the twins, she said that Eri should tag along too, she's only a month younger than them anyway." He was looking at Itachi defiantly, trying to justify bringing along kids that were much younger than the four year age requirement that Itachi had originally told him.

Itachi clapped Sasuke on the shoulder. "It's fine." He said quietly. "I'm actually glad you managed to get a couple of the really little children to come along, I didn't think you'd be able to convince anyone to let them come, so I didn't bother asking you to try and bring them."

Sasuke nodded slowly. "Yeah, probably only Hanae and Aunt Rei would be crazy enough to send three year olds away on a camping trip without their supervision." He said thoughtfully. "So what are we going to do now? Are we really going camping, or was that just what you wanted me to tell everyone?"

Sasuke was sharp. He knew that Itachi was plotting something, and camping wasn't part of it. "No, sorry, we're not going camping." He tightened his grip on Sasuke's shoulder. "I'm going to let you in on some stuff that I'm not going to tell the other kids now, but I need you to stay calm and remember that I'm telling you all this so you can help me trick the others into doing what we need them to do."

Sasuke raised his eyebrows and looked down at the toddler still clutching at his hand. She still had her thumb in her mouth and appeared to be half asleep. Sasuke looked back up to Itachi. "She's really quiet. Hasn't said a word since we left Hanae's, and she's never said much even when I've been around her before."

Itachi nodded. "When she does talk, does she repeat things?"

Sasuke shook his head. "Apparently she's a late bloomer; most of what she says is garbled nonsense. She's two and a half, but she's still at the baby talk stage."

"Good." Itachi focussed his attention back on Sasuke. "Now, stay calm and listen to me. Tonight, something is going to happen, and I need to make sure that you kids are away and in a safe place when things go down."

Sasuke's eyes widen like saucers, and his face immediately pales. "Nii-san? What's going to-?"

"I don't want to give you too many details." Itachi cut him off. "I can't. Please don't ask me to."

Sasuke shut his mouth with a click and nodded once robotically.

"What's going to happen now is we're going to go into the living room and tell all of the children that you and I are going to take them through a clan initiation of sorts, one that the children of the clan head have done for generations, and one that has to be kept secret from the adults while we're doing it."

Sasuke nodded slowly. "What kind of initiation is it?"

"None of the kids have gone into the inner sanctuary before; we're going to tell them that we're going to take them in together for the first time tonight."

"Inner sanctuary?" Sasuke frowned. "Is there one?"

"Yes." Itachi said patiently. "It's under the shrine. Not many people know it's there, and really, it isn't anything so special, but to kids, a secret room is exactly the kind of thing that they'll expect with a clan initiation."

"So we sneak the kids into the secret shrine room, and they'll all play along because they think it's an initiation and they can't alert the adults to the fact that we're up to something." A wide grin spread over Sasuke's face. "Nii-san, you're brilliant!"

Itachi smiled down at him ruefully. "So I've been told." He said. "So, you up for helping me out little brother?"

"Of course!"

"I promise that I'll explain everything to you and the other kids later, but right now, we just need to get this done." Itachi said. "You ready?"

Sasuke just grinned wider. "Of course!" He repeated. There was a fierce light in his eye. He was scared, Itachi could tell that much, but Sasuke was pushing through that fear because he wanted to live up to his older brother's expectations. Itachi had never been prouder.


	4. Chapter 3

It was surprisingly easy to convince a room full of excited children that they were about to partake in an ancient clan custom instead of going camping. It was also surprisingly easy to make the event sound exciting enough that not one kid complained about not being able to go camping, which they had all been pretty pumped up for already. Sasuke helped out a lot, he spun the story so well that it sounded like they were all going to become adults of the clan tonight, which, in a heart breaking way only known to Itachi, wasn't exactly a lie.

Another thing that turned out surprisingly easy was sneaking into the shrine. Itachi guided them into the secret room in small groups, taking them through the trees and round to the back of the shrine to avoid detection by the adults. They all thought it was a marvellous game, and most took it as an opportunity to show off to each other how good their ninja stealth skills were. By six o clock Sasuke and the other kids were all safely stowed away in the secret room and none of the adults suspected that anything strange was going down. As far as the clan was concerned, today was an ordinary Friday night, and the reason that the kids weren't around is that they were all off camping together with one of the many Uchiha uncles supervising. It was almost mind-numbingly scary how well Itachi's plan had worked.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Itachi left Sasuke to entertain the group with stories of the clan's history that they had heard from their father in preparation for being leaders of the clan, and slipped away one last time. He quietly made his way back to the house, picked up the back pack that he had packed while waiting for Sasuke to gather up the children and slung his sword across his shoulder. He scrawled a note to their parents, telling them that he and Sasuke were camping out in the woods together for training and quickly left the house as discreetly as possible. By six thirty, he was secure in the room under the shrine again, keeping a watchful eye over the rag tag bunch of Uchiha younglings.

By the point that he returned most of the children were over their initial fear and mistrust of him. Children were quick to forgive, and most of them had only heard vague rumours from their parents about what had happened with Shisui. Over the course of the evening, his quiet, but friendly demeanour and comfortable interactions with Sasuke reassured the group that he was a cool older brother type figure. It also helped that he also got the respect most of the kids showed to any member of the clan who was a full ninja. They idolised the shinobi members of the clan, like any self-respecting clan brat would.

It probably helped his popularity that he also came bearing junk food when he returned. There was nothing like sweets and crisps to win a child over to your side after all. Itachi was glad that he'd remembered to bring food as he saw the group devour all that he brought, it was going to be a long night anyway, the last thing he needed was them to be hungry on top of everything else.

At eight, Itachi told the kids that they were going to be spending the night inside the secret room, and kids started claiming bits of floor to sleep on. Most of them weren't tired yet, but those under six were starting to look dead on their feet, and Itachi was worried about them. He told them that he was going to turn down the lights so that the little kids could sleep, while the older ones could tell ghost stories or whatever. The kids seemed to like that idea, and they quickly settled themselves. By nine, all but the most determined were asleep, and even Sasuke, who had been on edge most of the night, was fighting a losing battle against sleep, leaning against his brother's shoulder. Itachi couldn't sleep, he was wound too tight. Part of him desperately hoped that he was wrong, and that Yoshiki wasn't going to murder their clan tonight. It would be wonderful to emerge from the shrine in the morning to find nothing amiss. Another part of him knew that most likely the killing had already started. If it was him, he would have started the massacre just after night fell. Seeing as it was summer, the sun didn't set until nearly nine. If things were starting, then they were starting about now.

Of course, Itachi had no way of knowing what was going on in the rest of the compound. The shrine was set apart from the rest of the village, and the secret room was quite well insulated. He wouldn't be able to hear anything going down outside in the compound, and he didn't dare try and sense anything using Chakra in case anyone sensed he was here and came to attack. He would fight to defend the kids if he had to, but he was at a terrible disadvantage while he had to protect such a large group of vulnerable people.

Then, just when Sasuke finally nodded off and Itachi was the only soul still conscious…

CRASH!

Most of the kids jolted awake to the sound of a group of people noisily barging into the shrine located above their heads. Panicked footsteps thundered from above them, and there was another crash as someone slammed the door to the shrine shut.

"Wha…? What's going on?" a girl… Haruna… muttered from near Itachi. Sasuke was wide awake again. He was clutching Itachi's arm tight, fingernails digging into his skin.

"Barricade the door!" A man's voice ordered loudly above them.

"He wouldn't dare come in here!" A woman cried out.

"To harm a member of the clan on sacred ground…" Another man seemed to agree with her, but neither of them sounded sure.

"The boy's gone mad!" The first man pointed out, the fear apparent in his voice. "There's no telling what he will or won't do!"

There was a clatter and crash as the men and women above their heads began to tear the inside of the shrine apart to barricade the only entranceway to the shrine. A woman was crying. Her tears were a constant whine in the background of general carnage.

Itachi was on his feet, towering among the stirring children around him. They were all starting to sit up now, confusion rippling across their sleepy faces. Pretty soon, Itachi knew that he would have to face the kids and convince them that they needed to stay still and calm. Luckily, the shrine had been made with secrecy seals embedded everywhere, so they didn't really need to stay quiet. No one could hear anything going on inside the secret room from the outside.

"Itachi-Nii-san?" That was Matsu's voice out of the darkness. Itachi turned and searched for his figure, and found him leaning against the wall, the twins still asleep using his legs as a pillow.

As the sounds of distress became louder above them, Itachi knew that he could no longer hide the true reason why he had brought them all to the shrine tonight from the children, not if he didn't want panic to take hold.

He looked around the room, meeting the eyes of every child that had woken squarely. Most of them were now wide awake and frightened; only the deepest sleepers had managed to continue dreaming through the hullabaloo above their heads. Of the eighteen children that Itachi had secreted away in the shrine, thirteen were wide eyed and staring at him now.

"Itachi-Nii-san, what's going on?" That was Hideki, he looked like he was about to start crying, and from the looks of the kids around him, he wasn't the only one. All of them were Uchiha, but before that, they were all human children. Of course they didn't have a good handle on their emotions right now.

Itachi took a deep breath. "I'm really sorry, all of you." He began. His voice was quiet, but the kids were focussed on what he was saying so hard that it didn't seem like any of the noise upstairs would interfere with them hearing him word for word. "The truth is, there is no clan tradition that involves all of you spending the night in here." He bit his lip. "I lied to you, tricked you into coming here, because my job for the night is to protect you all."

The adult voices laced with fear were very loud now. Every eye in the room looked up at the ceiling. They had put two and two together. Whatever had the adults running scared was the reason that Itachi had brought them to what was effectively a secret bunker under their clan shrine in order to protect them.

The woman crying upstairs was getting louder now, her wailing was panicked and unrelenting. As if responding to her tears, some of the children in his group began to sniffle.

"Please, you need to get a grip Rei, crying won't help us fight-"

"Like we actually have a chance!" One of the other men said fearfully. "How many of you have any weapons? How many of you have actually been in a decent fight recently? The boy's in ANBU, he'll slaughter us all without breaking a sweat!"

"Hush!"

The woman called Rei was still crying.

"Mama…" Matsu's quiet whimper made all of the children turn to stare at him fearfully. Matsu's eyes were transfixed on the ceiling, and his arms were clamped around the twins. "That's my Mama…"

"Rei! Please, this isn't helping"

"My boys!" Rei replied tearfully to the man trying to comfort her. "They're out in the woods, god knows where! I'm supposed to protect them! I'm their mother!" If the sounds she made were anything to go by, she had just erupted into a fresh wave of tears. "That _boy_ has killed most of us already- who's to say that he hasn't found the children?!"

"Focus on the present for now." Her comforter told her. "We just have to pray that he doesn't bother going after a group of children that aren't even genin yet."

"I saw Seki's little girl in the street on the way here… why do you think he'd spare Academy students if he's not sparing toddlers?" Someone else said harshly.

Itachi could see that most of the kids were shaking now. They were all looking at him desperately, waiting for him to explain things more. Matsu was still staring at the ceiling, murmuring for his mother. Itachi could tell that if he didn't have the twins sleeping on top of him, he probably would have jumped to his feet and started screaming for his mother already.

There was a tug on his sleeve. "Itachi-Nii-san, they're just upstairs…" It was Haruna's nine year old brother, Arata, looking up at him with tears in his eyes. "They sound really scared…. Couldn't they hide in here with us?"

Itachi's blood ran cold as murmurs of agreement ran through the group. They were all looking at him hopefully. Matsu's eyes had switched their focus from the ceiling to him.

Itachi looked around the room again, looking to see exactly who was awake. The majority were older kids, all at the Academy and preparing to become ninja themselves. They had all signed up for this life when they had enrolled in the Academy: they deserved the truth.

"I can't do that." Itachi said slowly.

Eyes full of fear turned to eyes full of horror. "Nii-san?!" That was Sasuke, tugging at his other sleeve, begging Itachi not to be so cruel.

Itachi began to shake. "You're all children of a Shinobi clan." He said evenly. "I'm going to treat you with the respect you're all owed." He looked around the room. "The adult members of the clan have been keeping things from you for months, no, years. Don't tell me that none of you have noticed that something big has been brewing behind closed doors?"

There were a couple of confused looks in the crowd, but most of the children's faces had now hardened into looks of understanding. Children weren't stupid. They realised when something was up.

"This is going to be awful, but I want you all to be brave." Itachi carried on. He couldn't stop now; the tidal wave of truth couldn't be halted. "The truth is, my mission to protect you is unofficial. I decided to do it on my own when I realised that tonight another, very different, unofficial order was going to be carried out." Itachi swallowed, his mouth dry. "What's going on in the compound right now is a _purge_."

Most children wouldn't have any idea what the word 'purge' meant. But the children surrounding Itachi weren't normal children; they were children of the Uchiha Shinobi clan. All of them were aware of what the word purge meant. They'd learned about purges in other places through history. They were mass killings of traitors: ridding the village of groups that were out to destroy their home from within.

Matsu had switched off, Itachi could see from the vacant look in his wide eyes. He was breathing too heavily to be natural: most likely the start of a panic attack. Most of the children around him were shaking like leaves, Sasuke in particular Itachi felt to be almost vibrating with fear and shock at his side.

"The grown-ups…. They wouldn't…." Haruna had her five-year-old brother clutched to her chest in a desperate hug. "They wouldn't…."

"None of you were privy to their plans." Itachi said slowly. "I know you weren't, because I was. I knew all along that our clan was preparing to betray the village. They were laying plans for a coup d'état. They were going to overthrow the Hokage and start a civil war. All of the adults were aware of it, even if they weren't actively involved. I decided that I didn't want any part of it. That's why all the adults have been giving me the cold shoulder for months."

Looks of realisation dawned all over as children put together the strange actions of their parents together to build a picture of betrayal. None of them doubted his words. They had a wealth of their own observations about their elders' strange behaviour over the past months to back up Itachi's story. It was all the convincing that they needed.

"I brought you all here because you're all innocent." Itachi said. "You had no part in our clan's betrayal. I needed to make sure that you guys weren't caught up in the purge. This can't be the end of our clan." Itachi's voice cracked. It was too much, months of stress and anxiety had finally caught up with him here. He was on the cusp of his own breakdown. "I can't let our clan die because of their mistakes. I couldn't let _you_ _all _die."

Sasuke clutched at his arm like a drowning man would grasp at driftwood. Itachi clutched his little brother close. There was nothing else he could do now. The kids couldn't do anything either. Itachi had sealed the trapdoor to the room when they were all distracted. It was keyed to him so no one else could open it. "Nii-san." Sasuke whimpered, whatever he had suspected was going on, he clearly hadn't thought it would be anything as bad as this. Itachi smoothed a hand over his brother's hair, hoping the action was soothing. In truth, Itachi was as freaked out as any other child in the room. He was only fourteen, and if his parents weren't dead yet, they soon would be. No fourteen year old, no matter how much of a genius they were, no matter how good a shinobi they were, was prepared to lose their parents at fourteen. Itachi still felt very much a child.

Upstairs, the adults were arguing now. Some of them wondered whether they should try and make a break for it towards the village. Most of the group seemed to think that plan was suicide. Their squabbling argument bubbled throughout the building, and it made Itachi feel sick. The adults knew that they didn't have a hope in hell of making it through the night alive. They were just arguing for the sake of convincing themselves that they still had the power to resist.

The kids that were awake were all crying now, not a single one of them had managed to keep up the stoic Uchiha temperament under the circumstances. Itachi either wanted to cry or throw up. It was so much worse for him. The kids didn't bother to try and help the adults because they knew that Itachi would stop them. Itachi had to live with the guilt and pain of sitting by and doing nothing while his clan was being attacked outside. He had the power to reach out and save the small group sitting in the shrine above him right now, if he so wished. But he didn't. He just clutched Sasuke closer and tried to block out the noises that they were making. It was getting easier and easier to do so. They were calming down upstairs now, their voices lowering and softening.

He had almost convinced himself that they had left when a bloodcurdling scream exploded throughout the shrine. Itachi shot to his feet as all hell broke loose, both upstairs and down. Screams and cries washed over them, unrelenting and terrifying, but that wasn't the worst part. Worse was the crunching and smashing sounds that came from people being thrown around the shrine like rag dolls. Bones were breaking, and Itachi was pretty sure that the fainter sounds of liquid being tossed over everything with a sickening _splat_ were caused by blood being spilt.

Itachi wasn't the only one on his feet. Matsu had lurched to his feet, shouting for his mother. The Twins had tumbled off his lap. They had jolted awake like the rest of the remaining children and had joined in with their older brother's wailing. Eri, the youngest in the room, was too scared to cry. She was shaking, face planted into the shirt of her cousin, a seven year old girl with black pigtails who was practically sitting in her classmate Hideki's lap. The silent crying throughout the room had escalated into panic attacks, and Itachi knew that he had to do something, but he had no idea what. Sasuke's was latched onto his arm even tighter now, and from the blossoming pain under his grip, Itachi realised that his fingernails had dug in tight enough to draw blood.

Then, as quickly as it started, everything upstairs went quiet. No screams. No cries. No sounds of a fight. Nothing. One by one, the children around Itachi fell silent, as if they realised that there was no point in making noise anymore. Hardly anyone dared to breathe, and there was a small noise upstairs. Someone shifted slightly, staggering their way across the floor of the shrine. There was a sharp cascade of noise as whoever it was kicked the rest of the barricade out of the doorway, and then they were gone.

Itachi looked around the room. Every eye was focussed on him. Some were wide and glassy, uncomprehending. Some were glossed with tears that still silently dripped down cheeks. Others were filled with horror, wide with tears they were too shocked to shed. Itachi felt his pulse quicken, his breathing shaky as he watched those eyes. He watched as a wave of red washed through the room, blossoming like flowers in the eyes of every child. They were swimming in red and black, tomoe swirling and spinning. He surveyed the room, counting the tomoe. The amount varied, depending on, Itachi assumed, how much each child had comprehended what had been going on upstairs. Every child over the age of ten sported three, most of those over five had two. The little ones mostly just had a single. They didn't yet fully understand what had happened, so their eyes had just reacted because they were more frightened than they'd ever been before.

Itachi looked down. Sasuke was still clinging to him. His eyes were wide with horror, three tomoe swirling within them. He was looking up at Itachi blankly, frozen. Itachi wanted to say something… anything… but the silence that had enveloped the group as the intruder upstairs had left was heavy, choking him up. He didn't know what to say.

It wasn't him, in the end, that broke the silence. A low, almost guttural whimper echoed throughout the room, and Matsu tumbled to his knees as if he was a puppet whose strings had been brutally cut. He slowly turned to look at Itachi, like the rest of the children, and it was the sight of his glassy, heavy lidded eyes that finally caused a reaction in Itachi. He felt it, the rush of power that meant his own fully matured sharingan had spiralled into his own eyes, then the strange morphing sensation that followed as they shifted again into the pinwheel shape of his mangekyou sharingan.

Matsu just stared back dumbly with his own strange eyes. A black crescent lying on its back against a red backdrop. Matsu's own mangekyou sharingan stared back across the room at Itachi. Distantly, Itachi remembered that Matsu had identified one of the occupants of the room upstairs to be his own mother. The sounds of her brutal murder had evidently awakened in him the next step in their clan's dojutsu. Itachi knew that Matsu, just like him, would gladly trade back his new powers just to see his loved one again. Unfortunately, that's not how it worked.

It was too much.

Itachi tumbled to the floor, only vaguely aware that he was dragging Sasuke down with him. His knees hit the tatami mats of the secret room's floor, and he began to sob. For the moment he forgot that he was a shinobi of the leaf: the one that all these poor children were counting on to get them through the night alive. For the moment, he was just Itachi: the boy who had just stood back and let his family die.

He didn't remember a whole lot of what happened directly after that. He just choked his way through sobs, tears dripping everywhere. He gasped out apologies through the onslaught of grief and guilt. He begged the children around him to forgive him: for exposing them to the horror of the murders, for not helping their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents. He wailed apologies to the dead: sorry that they were dead. Sorry that he wasn't sorry he didn't help them.

Eventually, Itachi felt himself calm down. His breathing slowed, his vision ceased blurring from the constant flow of water. When he came out of his stupor, he noticed that he wasn't alone. Every child that had been close to him had reached out. Sasuke was the one that had enveloped him in a hug, but two other small hands were clasping his on either side, and another person had their arms wrapped around his elbow. Several hands were resting comfortingly on his back, and someone had a hand on the top of his head. Itachi sniffed, straightened out, and realised that during his outburst, everyone in the room had congregated towards him, and now they were all intertwined into one comforting pile of togetherness. In the absence of parents, they had all rushed together to give and take comfort from each other, and in his sudden breakdown, he had become their centre.

Itachi wondered how long he had been crying. Most of the kids had drifted off into uneasy, exhausted sleep around him. Despite the fact that he was clinging tightly with no indication that he was ever letting go, Sasuke was in the same state. Realising that there was no way he would be able to peacefully extract himself from the mass of interconnected children, Itachi resettled himself into a cross-legged tailor's seat, shifting children so that they were lying more comfortably. Sasuke wouldn't let him go, So Itachi just settled for letting him sleep in his lap, clutching each other in a hug. Itachi then closed his eyes, settled his breathing, and slipped into meditation to wait out the rest of the night.

* * *

**A/N:**

And so the massacre finally kick-starts! Hey guys, this is just a quick note to thank you all for reading this far into my story (The chapters are quite long, especially this chapter- how did that happen?- so I'm really impressed that you've made it this far!). I also wanted to extend my thanks to the people that have reviewed so far. I love reading reviews, and I've probably re-read the ones that I've got for this story thus-far like, twenty times over, just to give me that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from when people compliment your story just _one_ more time.

Just to give you guys a head's up, this story was written on a whim, and I've planned it out to be quite short. So don't expect me to continue the story to explore the far reaching consequences of Itachi saving all the children. Hopefully this means that I'll be able to finish it up quite quickly, which gives you guys the added bonus of having the closure of a completed story to read. Of course, there's always the chance that I could be convinced to extend, but I kind of like the idea of this being just a short snapshot into a possible alternate reality of the Uchiha Clan Massacre. I might share some ideas in an author's note at the end of the fic about how I think the alternate reality might progress from there; such as what the impact of Itachi saving the children and my OC Yoshiki being the one to murder the clan might be, so look forward to that as well.

Thanks again for making it this far into the fic. I'm so pleased that people are reading it and liking it. That's all I could ever ask for. I value criticism, so if you have any suggestions or critiques, please write me a review or flick me a PM. I read everything, and even if I don't like what you might say, I always take it on board: hit me with your best shot!


	5. Chapter 4

His inner body clock told him that sunrise was an hour or so away when his eyelids flickered open again. Against his intentions just to meditate, he had in fact fallen asleep. The exhaustion of the mentally straining day had caught up to him, not to mention the fact that, due to his ANBU mission; he hadn't more than a couple of cat naps' worth of sleep in the last few days. Straightening up while simultaneously trying not to jostle Sasuke out of his uneasy sleep, Itachi looked around the room again, checking up on its occupants.

They were all still sleeping, but the close knit pile of limbs that they had initially gathered into had now spread out across the floor into a general tangle of limbs. For a moment, Itachi was able to fool himself into thinking that this mass of peacefully sleeping children were just having a sleepover. When the sun rose, and they woke up, they would all smile and laugh, fool around, then go back to their families to tell their parents what a great night they all had.

A whimper escaping from the mouth of nine-year-old Arata shattered his daydream. The boy was clearly having a nightmare, and from the uncomfortable twitching of many of the children, he wasn't the only one. Itachi shifted Sasuke in his arms slightly, then gently laid him out on the ground. Sasuke shifted in his sleep, then latched onto the nearby bodies of Samuru and Haruna, curling up together with them. None of the kids were sleeping on their own, like Sasuke they had all cuddled up to others in the night, seeking comfort in small groups. Itachi stood up and quietly picked his way through the group, doing his best not to wake anyone. Even though they were all having nightmares, Itachi knew that waking to reality would be even worse. Better they escape into dreams for now.

As he finally tip toed his way out of the group though, he realised that he was going to have to wake at least one person. Slowly, he knelt by Matsu's side, gently shaking him awake. Matsu was slow to wake. He had been dreaming badly. Cold sweat covered the boy, and even as he woke up and started to regain his senses, he continued to shake. He was pale, and as he sat up Itachi could tell by the puckering of his mouth and the dizzy, glazed look in his eye that he was feeling nauseous. Itachi rubbed his back, trying to comfort him. He whispered a couple of words of reassurance to him, asking if he needed him to do anything for him. Matsu shook his head stubbornly.

"I couldn't stop dreaming about it." His voice was scratchy and low. "I heard them die over and over and over again, Itachi-Nii-san…."

Itachi could do nothing but rest a hand on Matsu's shoulder, steadying him. "I know. You had it the roughest last night, having to hear that." Itachi felt his head bow. "I'm truly sorry."

A tug on his sleeve. Matsu had reached out and grabbed the black fabric, seeking comfort from Itachi in a small way. "I saw… your eyes…" He said slowly. "They looked… different… to the sharingan." He swallowed nervously. "I saw everyone else and their eyes, but mine felt strange…. Different…." He trailed off, avoiding eye contact with Itachi.

"You didn't sense wrong. Your eyes are a little different to the others." Itachi said softly. "You're like me. Last night you awoke the next stage of the sharingan."

Matsu's grip on Itachi's sleeve tightened. "How…?"

"The mangekyou sharingan is activated by great loss." He replied. "You have to bear witness to someone close to you die. I suspect that hearing your mother was the trigger."

There was the sound of a sniffle, but Matsu was still stubbornly refusing eye contact. "The next stage of the sharingan… will it make me stronger?"

Itachi couldn't help but frown at this. "Yes. It is a very powerful weapon." He was unsure where Matsu was going with this line of thought. "Why?"

"So, if I use it, will it mean that I can protect everyone else?" Matsu's voice was small. "Will it keep my brothers safe?"

_Oh._ "Power alone cannot guarantee that you can protect them." Itachi said. "But it's one hefty advantage, don't you think?"

Matsu looked up to meet his eyes now. His were a little watery, but he wiped them carefully with the back of the hand that wasn't still clutching Itachi's sleeve and steadied himself with a deep breath. "Okay." He said simply. He still looked pale and sick, but Itachi allowed himself to feel relieved as Matsu's shaking eased. It looked like he was started to get a grip on himself.

Itachi patted him on the shoulder gently. "Hey, Matsu…"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think you're up to looking after everyone for a while?" Itachi asked. "It's nearly morning, I want to go and investigate outside."

Matsu froze. For a second Itachi thought he had forgotten how to breathe. "But…. What…. What if _that person_ is still out there?"

Itachi shook his head. "He'll be long gone by now." He reassured Matsu. "Realistically, he probably fled the village hours ago."

Matsu bit his lip. "If you say so." He sighed. "But please be careful. Everyone will get really scared if something happens to you."

"I know." Itachi said. He slipped out of Matsu's grip and hauled himself to his feet. He wasn't looking forward to what he had to do now. All he really wanted was to stay hidden away in this little room forever, safe from the outside world, but that was just him being silly. They couldn't hide forever. "Don't worry, I plan to be back before they all wake up. I'll just feel better leaving someone in charge in case they do."

Matsu nodded. "You can count on me." He said quietly.

Itachi nodded at him, thankful, then made his way over to the trapdoor and its wooden steps. Grimly, he steadily climbed the steps and reached out a hand to the seal plastered over the door. Quietly, he ripped it off, then pushed up on the door quickly, going about the task in the same way that one might attempt to rip off a band aid: as quick as possible to lessen the time spent doing painful things. Itachi jumped through the trapdoor as soon as it opened, and shut it firmly behind him. Then he braced himself and surveyed the destroyed room around him.

It was not as bad as he suspected.

It was worse.


	6. Chapter 5

The shrine around him was utterly destroyed. Half a wall had collapsed, and there wasn't an object that hadn't been touched by destruction. Some ruined things Itachi guessed had been used as poor makeshift weapons, others he could see had just had the misfortune of being in the way of an epically violent struggle. What wasn't broken was ruined by congealing blood stains, drying to a rusty brown that looked like it could never be removed. Itachi tried not to focus on the sources of the blood. It was too horrible.

Over there. There was the body of Matsu's mother. Her throat was slit, and one of her legs was bent at an angle that told Itachi that it had been broken first to stop her from running or fighting back. She was lying spread eagled near the altar of the shrine, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Her body was the most intact.

Itachi found it hard to identify the other people who had taken refuge in the main hall, hoping that their attacker would be reluctant to shed blood in the most sacred heart of the shrine. Quite a few were missing limbs, one man was missing his head, and Itachi could not locate where it had disappeared to. For the most part, they looked to be retired members of the clan. Most had the body types of people that had either never attempted serious shinobi training, or had stopped years ago to pursue other careers. Matsu's mother was an example of this type of clan member, having stopped her shinobi career just after she made chunin to marry and raise her family. Itachi also identified the man that ran a small weapons shop within the Uchiha district, as well as an older clan member that he knew worked in their local bakery. A spotty teenager five years older than Itachi was probably the closest thing that the group had to an active shinobi, but he had been taken off the active roster over a year ago due to sustaining crippling injuries in the chunin exams. Itachi knew that the boy's injured back meant that moving quickly was painful for the boy, it would have been a miracle if he could have pulled off any decent taijutsu movements under that kind of pain. Evidently he had still put up a heck of a fight: he had the most defensive injuries out of all the shrine occupants, and Itachi saw that he had taken several lethal hits before he had died.

Only years of active duty and his experience on ANBU missions allowed Itachi to regard this scene with emotional distance. He had known all these people. They may not have been close, but they had been part of his clan. He'd grown up knowing these people. Now they were dead in front of him. He'd heard them die, safe in the room below the shrine.

Despite his training, his emotions were threatening to overwhelm him. Hurriedly, Itachi turned his back on the mutilated bodies of his relatives and quickly exited the shrine. It was still dark out, but Itachi estimated that in another hour or so the horizon would be pink with the coming dawn. For now, the tragedy that had befallen the Uchiha was covered by darkness, but soon all would be revealed in gory detail under the harsh light of day.

He made his way quickly down the shrine steps, making his way towards the main street. The quickest way to get a grip on the current situation was to go straight into the main hub of activity for the clan. The main street was where most of the Uchiha would have been, had they still been outside their homes when the massacre started. It would be the place with the most damage.

Itachi did not look at the bodies that he stumbled across on his way to his destination. With the darkness shadowing things, he could pretend that they weren't what he thought they were. It was a flimsy fantasy, but one he needed to cling to right now. The last thing he needed was to succumb to a panic attack before he had found out whether the compound was secure. There was a group of frightened children relying on him. He could freak out when everyone was safe.

He focussed on putting one sandal in front of the other, scanning his surroundings for movement. He walked with his hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw it from his back at the first sign of attack. The compound was quiet, which Itachi found unnerving. It had never been this quiet and still before, even this early in the morning. Once again, he had to force himself not to dwell on the horrific conclusion that these facts pointed to.

Suddenly, there was a flicker of movement, and Itachi drew his sword with a hiss, settling into a defensive stance. His heart thumped in his chest. Had Yoshiki not fled? He didn't want to fight anyone. He wasn't sure if he was up to killing anyone right now.

A white mask materialised out of the darkness, and Itachi found himself face to face with a dog with red markings on his cheeks. Instantly, Itachi felt his knees buckle, and his sword loosened in his grip. Relief flooded through him, even though he knew that he ought to still be on guard, considering that he now stood face to face with one of the elite of the village: the ANBU hound.

"Itachi." It was only one word, but it conveyed so much. Disbelief, shock, suspicion, happiness and relief. Itachi was feeling many of the same things himself.

"Sempai." The word choked out contained all of Itachi's current feelings. His insecurities, sadness, horror, fear and relief at seeing his old captain. Itachi could only hope that Hound recognised all that he was trying to say with that one shaky word.

Hound had not made any threatening moves towards him. He stood with his hands clearly visible at his sides, his stance relaxed. "We know that it wasn't you, Itachi." Hound said evenly, guessing at the foremost fear that Itachi had, now that he was facing his old ANBU captain.

Itachi felt all the breath rush out of him at once. He knew he probably shouldn't be letting his guard down in front of an ANBU agent. It was likely that Hound was lying about knowing Itachi's innocence in order to get him to relax. It was what he would have done had he been in Hound's situation. Itachi found, however, that he didn't care. His sword slipped from his grip, clanging to the ground with the ring of metal crashing into pavement. His knees met the ground not long after, and he doubled over, drawing large shaky breaths into his quivering frame. The break down that he had been trying to avoid ever since he had emerged from the underground room was finally bubbling to the surface.

Itachi felt a hand on the back of his head. "Calm down kid." Hound said quietly. "It's okay now. You're gonna get through this."

Itachi shuddered, trying to push the break down away. He couldn't afford to do this yet, but the presence of Hound made him feel like a child. This man had protected him when he had first joined ANBU. He'd always trusted him to have his back. It was comforting enough to allow Itachi to slip in his emotional control, even as he was dimly aware that he needed to get a grip.

Itachi breathed deep. "They're all dead, aren't they?"

He heard a regretful sigh. "Yes."

Itachi shut his eyes against the tempest of emotion that was clawing through his chest. "Who did this?" He already knew, but he wanted to know if they did. He wanted to know if he'd been right about who Danzo had chosen to strike the final blow against the Uchiha.

"Kid called Yoshiki." Hound said grimly. "He escaped the village by just slipping out of his ANBU pursuers' grasp. His ANBU team mates have examined most of the damage, and they've confirmed that the kills are most likely to be Yoshiki's handiwork. His style is quite distinctive, apparently."

"Yoshiki Uchiha." Itachi repeated dumbly. He had been right. "He really…. He really killed them all?"

"Even his own goddamn mother." Hound's voice was hard. "Bastard slaughtered everyone he could find. I'm sorry Itachi, not even children were spared. We haven't accounted for everyone, but everyone who isn't chasing after Yoshiki is out here shifting bodies. Your squad should be around here too. They'll be relieved to see you, they reported to the Hokage that you had gone straight home after your mission had finished. Everyone thought that it was only a matter of time before we found your body too."

Itachi was startled at the mention of his squad. He'd only seen them that afternoon, but it felt like years away now. He wasn't sure how he felt that they were in the vicinity. They had deserved a weekend of rest after their mission, not to be dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to be told that their captain had most likely been killed, and they needed to help clean up the bodies of his family.

Itachi took one final deep breath to steady himself, then pulled himself up off the ground to face Hound properly. "Is the Hokage here too?"

Hound nodded curtly. "He's overseeing the operation." He explained. "I think he's pretty shaken. It'll do everyone some good to see that there was at least one survivor amongst this mess." Hound hesitated. "Itachi. You need to know. We found your parents as well. They've already been moved to the main street. It's where we've been accounting for the bodies."

He nodded at Hound. "I figured that they were gone too." He said quietly. "I… I was prepared."

A hand clasped his shoulder. "Come on, let's go." Itachi decided to let his brain switch off. Hound led the way to the main street now. He could afford to turn off for a little while.

* * *

**A/N:**

Thank you once again to all of you that have reviewed this fic so far! Your reviews give me warm fuzzies every time I read them, and I'm eternally astonished that you guys like it so much! Thanks! I also want to thank all of you who have favourited or followed this story – if anything, that's just as encouraging for me as a writer, because every time I post a chapter, I know that there is a group of people waiting to read it already. I just hope that I manage to live up to your expectations! I'm trying to keep the chapters reasonably short, because I realised after I posted chapter 3 that 4,500 words might be a bit too much of a chunk to read all at once. What do you guys think? Any preferences? Otherwise I think I'm going to try and stick to about 2000 words per chapter, it seems like a good number.


	7. Chapter 6

The first thing that he was greeted with when they finally made it to the main street was a line of bodies. They were uncovered. The ANBU working tirelessly to collect them all were too rushed to pause to find blankets and sheets to cover them up. Itachi watched as more bodies were added to the line-up under the watchful eye of the Hokage. The man looked impossibly old confronted with the bodies of one of the clans of his village. It was clear to see that the Hokage was not faking his grief at this terrible loss. He really had thought they could settle this matter between the clan and the village without bloodshed.

"Hokage-sama." Hound called out to him the moment that they hit the main street. Both the Hokage and the ANBU working around him turned to look at Hound, double taking when they saw Itachi walking along just behind him.

The Hokage's eyes widened. "Itachi-kun!" There was a joy mixed in with grief at his exclamation. He was happy to be confronted with a survivor, but it was a bitter happiness. The ANBU around him all started to murmur. It didn't take much to realise that they were relieved to find a survivor too. Clearly even this much death was too much for even the hardest of ANBU.

"Hokage-sama…" Itachi didn't know what to say. Even though he was addressing the leader of his village, he couldn't tear his eyes away from the line of dead. Luckily, it seemed that no one was expecting him to act composed during this situation, they were just happy that he had turned up alive.

"I found him making his way to main street." Hound reported. "It seems that he was absent during the attack. He missed the whole thing."

Itachi squeezed his eyes shut, suppressing tears. It was one thing to have a minor break down in front of your former captain, it was quite another to do so in front of the entire ANBU force. He had to keep a hold on himself.

"I'm thankful at least someone survived." The Hokage's voice was hollow. "We haven't found any injured so far, only the dead."

Itachi opened his eyes to see the Hokage openly flinch. An ANBU agent wearing a hawk mask was carrying a toddler past, adding the infant to the line. His stomach rebelled, and he felt his knees tremble. _I should have tried harder to get the babies._ He thought dumbly. _I knew deep down that they wouldn't be spared, yet I only tried to get those over the age of four._

"Where are the others?" the Hokage gestured towards the toddler, hand shaking. "I can't see any of the older children here."

An ANBU agent nearby sighed. "We think there might have been some sort of get-together for the clan children last night. They must be all in the same place, and we haven't found it yet. We're not done sweeping the whole compound, after all."

The Hokage grimaced. "Please find them quickly. Even in death, they shouldn't be separated from their loved ones too long."

Itachi let out a shuddering gasp. His situation had come rushing back to him. In the daze of being confronted by the bodies of his clan, he had forgotten what he had come out to do. He had people he still needed to protect. Itachi fell to his knees, suddenly dizzy. He couldn't bring himself to speak. The last thing he wanted was to expose those poor children to this line-up of corpses. Part of him wanted to just leave them sleeping forever in the secret room, they would certainly be happier.

He felt the familiar weight of a hand on his shoulder again: Hound. "I'm sorry Itachi. I know what your brother meant to you."

Hound had mistaken his reaction to the ANBU report on the children. He was trying to offer comfort. For a minute Itachi's blood ran cold as he contemplated the thought of Sasuke's body being added to the line of corpses.

Itachi shook his head, trying to dispel the image. "No. That's not it." He straightened up. "Hokage-Sama."

The Hokae turned to him, puzzlement in his features. Itachi knew he was acting strangely, and he knew that he was beating around the bush when it was far more logical to just come out and report what he knew directly, but his mind was in a hundred different places right now. "Itachi-kun?"

"The children." Itachi forced the words out. "Eighteen of them between the ages of two and eleven. I know where they are."

The Hokage's eyes widened, and suddenly the full attention of everyone in the immediate proximity was on him. "You discovered the children before coming here?" The Hokage asked. There was immense pity in his voice. He had jumped to the same conclusion as all the other ANBU: that Itachi had stumbled across the bodies of his smaller relatives first.

Itachi shook his head, dispelling yet another horrible image of his young charges brutally slaughtered like the scene in the main hall of the shrine. "No. I've been with them all night. They're all asleep under the Naka Shrine. Sasuke organised a sleepover last night, and we ended up camping in the secret room under the shrine when the kids complained that they were bored of camping in the woods all the time."

"They're alive?!" The Hokage exclaimed. The ANBU around him quivered. This was far more than anyone had dared to hope for when they had heard there had been a terrible attack in the Uchiha district. Itachi could sense the relief and happiness in the air; it was that tangible.

"I don't think… he… knew of the room under the shrine. Not many people do. I was the one that suggested sleeping in there to Sasuke when the kids were spitballing interesting places to camp." Itachi found that the small lies that explained their bizarre sleeping arrangements when they were supposed to be unaware of the impending doom of the clan sprang to his lips easily. A lot of it wasn't lies. The kids _were_ kind of bored of always camping in the same place, and he _had_ been the one to suggest the secret room to Sasuke. It takes a special kind of skill to lie convincingly to a shinobi, but Itachi had grown up around them. He was a good liar.

"My god…." The Hokage didn't quite know what to make of this. "That's how you missed the attack?"

"I was watching over the kids." Itachi said. "I didn't know anything was happening until…" the horrible sounds of last night's attack sprang to the forefront of his mind, making him falter, "…until we were all woken up by a group of people breaking into the shrine. We technically weren't supposed to be under the shrine, so we didn't go out and investigate. Soon after that we heard someone else enter the room above us and slaughter everyone. It was over so quickly, and I had eighteen children to protect, I didn't dare open up the trap door of the room to investigate." Lies were spilling out of him. It was true that he had eighteen children to protect, but that was no real excuse as to why he hadn't opened up the secret room to shelter the adults who had been hiding scared in the main hall upstairs. He wondered if he would ever wash their blood off his hands. Even though he hadn't struck the killing blows, it was clearly him that had killed them. "I waited until I thought it might be safe enough to leave the children hiding by themselves for a bit to come and investigate, then I found…." Itachi felt his voice crack, "…. This…." He gestured around him.

The Hokage examined him for a long moment. Itachi met his eyes squarely. He knew the Hokage had immediately suspected that he had fudged the details of his story, if not outright lied. He also knew that Sarutobi was not going to reprimand him for doing so. The Hokage was wise enough to know that Yoshiki had executed the clan on orders. He was also wise enough to know that Itachi had probably been aware that the purging was going to happen prior to the start of the attack. The Hokage nodded at him once, a look of deep thanks in his eyes. He was thanking Itachi for doing what he could: for interfering to save as many innocents as he could get away with. In that moment, Itachi knew that he had gotten away with his actions over the past fourteen hours. Both him and the surviving Uchiha children were now under the direct protection of the Hokage. Most likely Danzo would never stop watching them, but he had no reason to harm them. This was Itachi's victory, however small.

The Hokage whirled around to gesture at a couple of ANBU. "Escort Itachi-kun back to the shrine." He ordered. "Recover the children and secure them at the western medical unit. Don't take them to the hospital, we don't want to attract too much attention. They need to rest somewhere out of the public eye for now."

Itachi scrambled to his feet. His Hokage had given him orders. He needed to follow them. He had no time for grief or regrets. "Hokage-sama, please grant us permission to clear the shrine of the dead before retrieving the children. I want to request that we do our best to make sure they see as little of this as possible." He gestured to the bodies of their clan. Sasuke would not see the broken bodies of their parents lying on the ground, just a number to be counted in preparation for burial, if he could help it. He was feeling similarly protective of all the other children. It was like at some point in the night they had all become his little siblings.

"Your request is granted." The Hokage nodded. "Make sure that you take the children through the cleared areas to get them to the medical unit." He instructed. "Try to avoid them seeing any of the dead." The Hokage glanced towards the man still standing at Itachi's side. "Hound, I'm putting you in charge of the extraction and protection of the Uchiha children. With Itachi's help, rescue the kids and guard them until further notice."

"Yes, Hokage-sama." Hound nodded and turned to Itachi. "Let's go."

Hound turned and started jogging down the main street, making his way towards the shrine. Itachi made a short bow to the Hokage, then whirled around and ran to catch up. He barely noticed as a woman in an owl mask and a man in a monkey mask joined them, flanking the two of them as they ran towards the shrine. All he could think about now was getting back to the kids and getting them away from the compound and into a safe place.

_Just a little longer._ He told himself. _Just a little longer until this ordeal is over, then you can rest Itachi Uchiha._

_Just a little bit longer…._

* * *

**A/N:**

All of your advice on chapter length is duly noted. I'm going to try and write chapters in longer chunks now. Unfortunately, the next chapter is already written, and it's not particularly long either (like this one... sorry), but it is loner than this, so look forward to that! I'm just in the stages of proofreading it and editing it now, so you guys should get it soon!


	8. Chapter 7

An entire ward of the western medical centre was closed off, just for them. Itachi thought it had to be one of the quietest rooms he'd ever been in. None of the children said much of anything, and he couldn't blame them. He sat on the bed closest to the door, cross-legged over the covers, a guardian angel protecting them from whoever might come through the doors at the end of the long narrow room. The bed next to him held Sasuke, sitting with his knees hugged tight to his chest and his back against the headboard. The two beds opposite them were empty, but the remaining sixteen in the room had been filled with what was left of the Uchiha clan. Some of them were sleeping, others were sitting and zoning out, like Sasuke. Itachi watched over them all in quiet grief.

Not one of the group had shed tears since their arrival in the cold white room. Even the toddlers seemed to have lost the ability to cry any more tears, they were curled up mutely next whoever had decided to share a bed with them. Despite Itachi and the ANBU's attempts to shield everyone from the brutality of the massacre, the children had still seen some pretty horrible things in the journey from the secret room to the medical facility. After all, it was easy to move and hide a body from view. Bloodstains, on the other hand, were impossible to cover up. None of the kids had been exposed to the kind of scene that Itachi had seen when he had first climbed out of the room, but the crusty brown stains covering everything told them enough of what must have happened above their heads the night before. A couple of kids had thrown up, right there in the ruined shrine. Most of the others looked like they'd gone into shock.

The entire sorry group had been poked and prodded by some medic nin upon arrival, pronounced physically healthy, then been shoved into this ward, where they had clambered onto beds and hadn't moved or spoken since. Looking around, Itachi knew that even if the children had come through this ordeal without a scratch, none of them were unharmed. The mental scarring of the night before would most likely be with them all for the rest of their lives. Some of the kids that had tried to sleep had already succumbed to some pretty horrible sounding nightmares before jolting awake again. The only ones that Itachi had even the slightest hope of being able to move past this mostly unaffected were the under-fives. With luck, they would forget as they grew up, until this memory was about as frightening as the monsters in the dark that had frightened Itachi himself when he had been that small.

The Hokage had summoned him, roughly an hour after they had arrived. His movement to get up and leave triggered the first response in the room since they had settled in. Itachi spent quite a long time reassuring panicking kids that he was going to return as quickly as he could before they were relaxed enough to let him leave. Even then, they didn't look too happy about the separation. The look in Sasuke's eyes was heart breaking; as if Itachi had announced that he was leaving on a journey and wouldn't be back for ten years. In reality, he was just going to the room next door, and he told them all so.

"I see that they all cling to you now, in place of their parents." It was the first thing that the Hokage said to him after he slipped into the small office and shut the door behind him. Itachi knelt in front of his Hokage, unsure of what exactly was going to happen in this meeting. The future of the Uchiha clan probably rested on what he was going to say during this meeting, a fact that made Itachi's throat dry up with anxiety.

"There are secrecy seals positioned throughout this office." The Hokage said mildly from his chair by the window. "I set them up just before you arrived."

Itachi swallowed. It was clear, then, what the Hokage intended to discuss with him here. S-Ranked secrets were about to flow like water. Itachi wasn't sure whether he wanted to hear them or not.

"It seems that Yoshiki Uchiha made a successful escape last night." The Hokage turned to face him now, eyes unreadable. "But somehow I suspect that you don't feel that outraged that the murderer of your clan got away." He paused. "Will you seek revenge? It is your right."

"No. I don't have that right, Hokage-sama." Itachi said softly. "Even if I did not strike the blows, I was just as much a killer as Yoshiki last night."

"Ah." The Hokage lifted his pipe to his mouth, casually lighting it with a small fire jutsu and sitting back in his chair. "I suspected as much Itachi-kun."

"I knew." Itachi said bitterly. "I knew and I did nothing. In another life, perhaps I might even have been the one to do the deed."

"Prehaps." Sarutobi blew out a mouth full of smoke. "But you didn't in this one. And don't be so hard on yourself, you didn't do nothing: you saved eighteen innocent children last night, and the village is safe from a potential coup d'état." Another mouthful of smoke was released into the room. "I'd say that's a very accomplished night's work."

"How much did you know?" Itachi didn't want to question his Hokage, it was almost physically painful to force these accusatory words out, but he had to know. He deserved to know. "How much did you know about Yoshiki and his orders?"

Sarutobi sighed the sigh of a man that had been doing a thankless job ten years longer than he should have been. "Up until this morning?" He said. "Nothing. I suspected, of course. I'm not so stupid as to ignore what is going on in my own ANBU forces. Like you, I chose to do nothing." The Hokage sounded bitter. Itachi wasn't sure whether he was bitter because he regretted doing nothing, or because he hated the fact that someone else had given the order to do something so terrible within the village he was supposed to be ruling. "Yoshiki came to me when it was done, to report the completion of his mission before he fled the village to live as a missing nin." He said quietly.

Itachi carefully stored this information away. It seemed that Yoshiki was more honourable than Itachi had originally thought. Yoshiki had chosen to report to the Hokage, not to Danzo, when the mission was completed. It showed that despite his actions, Yoshiki was still loyal to the village and the Hokage first. His report alerted the Hokage to the fact that Danzo had been working behind his back, undermining his efforts of diplomacy in the village. Itachi had to stop himself from smirking. Danzo may have gotten what he wanted this time around, but Yoshiki ratting him out to the Hokage would certainly have consequences for him in the near future.

"Hokage-sama." Itachi said slowly. "I have to report a failure on my own part."

"What is it?"

"In order to gain the trust and co-operation of the children during the massacre, I had to tell them the truth. They all know that what happened last night wasn't the work of one man going crazy. They are all aware that it was a purge." Itachi tensed, unsure of how the Hokage would take to the news that eighteen children had been informed of S-rank secrets by one of his ANBU captains last night without his authority.

Itachi was braced for anger or disappointment, instead all he heard was a sigh of resignation. "I figured that they would have found out, given the circumstances under which you saved them." Sarutobi admitted. "You will have to talk to them, informing them of the consequences of divulging the truth of what happened last night to others."

He couldn't believe it. "Hokage-sama…. You're not mad?"

"Not really. I imagine we could have fooled one or two survivors, but not a group of almost twenty. They're children, not stupid." The Hokage snorted. "Better that we tell them the truth and bind them to village confidentiality rules than we leave them to jump to their own conclusions. One child asking too many questions could bring this whole glass castle of lies crashing down around us. We must be careful."

"I doubt many of them will want to talk about the truth of the massacre at all. It will be the eternal shame of our clan that our elders were plotting treason against the village. They will not need much convincing to keep their mouths shut: they'll want to keep the honour of the clan intact."

"That's what I was hoping for." The Hokage replied, huffing smoke at Itachi. He paused for a moment, regarding the solemn boy still kneeling on the carpet in front of him, head bowed. "You may rise, Itachi-kun."

He did so, feeling a little unsteady on his feet. The heavy conversation had passed. There was nothing more to say about the massacre now. Itachi wanted nothing more than to be dismissed so that he could go back to his bed in the room full of the last of the Uchiha and collapse into sleep.

"Itachi-kun, surely you are aware that things must change now." The Hokage voice was even, giving nothing away. Itachi wondered what he was thinking. Sometimes it was hard to tell; the man was a good politician and, rumour has it, an even better poker player. It was a common joke that he had won a sizeable chunk of the Sarutobi family fortune off of the Legendary Sucker in games with his former students.

"Obviously the structure of the city has to change." Itachi replied carefully. "The whole of the military police was wiped out. I suspect that our workload in the ANBU will be very heavy until a replacement organisation can be set up."

Sarutobi's mouth twitched: was it amusement? Or something else? "I was not talking about the structure of the village, Itachi-kun, I was referring to what will become of what is left of the Uchiha clan."

"Oh." Well. Now he felt stupid. He had never thought once throughout the entire night what was going to happen to the survivors once the night was through. Now that he began to think it through, he was beginning to see the headache that he had inadvertently given his Hokage by saving the eighteen children. Seeing as all the Uchiha had died in the massacre there were no family members to take care of these now orphaned children. Itachi had now essentially thrust another eighteen children into the already overloaded Konoha orphan program. Whoops.

"Oh." The Hokage repeated in amusement. "I daresay you also didn't think about the fact that with your father's death, you have inherited his responsibilities as head of the clan?"

"Ah." No, he hadn't thought about that either. Really? What had gotten into him? He was usually so much better than this at thinking ahead and planning stuff out. Itachi blamed it on the panic that had seized him yesterday afternoon when he had realised what was about to happen.

"Itachi-kun, it's pretty obvious what needs to happen next, even if you don't like it." The Hokage said. "I'm withdrawing you from ANBU and returning you to the regular enlistment rolls as a jounin of the village." Numbly, Itachi took in what the old man in front of him was saying. Just like that, his ANBU career was over. He didn't know whether to be happy or sad. Dimly he was also aware that the Hokage had just casually given him a promotion; he had only been a chunin when he left the regular roster. "I'm giving you my full support to ascend to the position of clan head of the Uchiha. As the only legal adult of the clan, I'm also requesting that you assume custody of the eighteen clan orphans left behind by the massacre."

His mind reeled. He, a fourteen year old boy, had just become the sole parent of a group of eighteen. There was no way this was going to go well, the extent of his childcare training had been watching over Sasuke when his parents had been too busy.

"The village will do its best to help you. I daresay that we can assign you a genin squad now and then for a D-rank babysitting mission, and I will personally help you find a place to accommodate everyone. It might be for the best if you move out of the Uchiha district, at least for now."

Itachi nodded. His situation was becoming more and more real by the second. He tried to shake off his own fear. Things would work out. They had to.

"Money, on the other hand, might be more complicated." Sarutobi continued. "Unless you have any objections, I'm going to suggest that the surviving children will each inherit whatever assets their respective parents left behind. Whatever remains will be added to the clan's collective asset pool, under your direct control."

"That sounds reasonable." Itachi said. "I assume as their legal guardian, it will be my responsibility to take care of their new found fortunes until they become adults of the village?"

"Yes. To all intents and purposes, they will be reliant on you money wise until they come of age and can access their accounts and earn their own wages." Saurtobi looked at him. "Most clans have the policy of providing for orphans out of the clan's collective account. The Uchiha clan account had to be one of the largest even before the tragedy, so I trust doing this will not be a problem. I would love to help you out, but I have a whole hoard of other orphans to take care of: ones that are not lucky enough to have access to clan accounts."

"The clan account will be fine." Itachi bowed. "We do not require monetary assistance, Hokage-sama. I will do my best to fulfil my duty. Those kids are my responsibility now." He forced himself to stand straighter, and look the Hokage boldly in the eye. He was no longer in ANBU, he was now a clan head of Konoha. It was time that he stepped up and started acting like it.

The Hokage smiled. "I see." He said slowly. "Well… good luck Itachi-kun."

It was a dismissal. Itachi bowed low, then turned and walked out of the room. His knees felt like jelly, and he wasn't sure if it was because he hadn't had a full night's sleep since Tuesday, or if it was because his life had just changed drastically in the course of one reasonably short conversation. As he quietly shut the door behind him, Itachi mulled over what he was going to say to the children when he returned next door. Would they be happy or sad that he was to become their guardian? Clearly whatever happened next, the next house in which the head of the Uchiha would reside would most certainly be a madhouse. Itachi wondered where he was going to find the room to house eighteen children and himself. He thanked the gods that the Hokage had offered to help him find a place where he could fit them all. He didn't even have a clue where to start looking.

Just before Itachi's hand reached the door knob of the ward where he had left all his relatives a short time ago, he stopped, hesitating a little. Dimly, he considered what he might be doing right at that moment had he made a different decision three weeks ago, when Danzo had ordered him to execute his family. Instead of being the head of a clan of children, he'd be a missing-nin, far away from his village. The thought made him shiver, but there was no point in dwelling on what might have been. Itachi had made his choice, and this was the consequence. Who knew what was going to happen next?

Itachi put his hand on the door knob, twisted, and entered. There was no use dithering. He had a clan to lead.

* * *

**A/N:**

Well, there we go! I'm sorry to say that this is the last chapter of 'A Different Decision'! From the very beginning I only planned to write up until the point directly after the massacre. Like I said in an earlier author's note, I intended this to be a snapshot into a possible alternate universe, I wasn't planning to rewrite the whole of the Naruto. I see lots of people start projects like these, starting up alternate universes and then attempting to follow them through until the very end. I admire people who have the dedication to do that, but it is a huge commitment, not to mention difficult. A lot of alternate universes start out fantastic, but then grow boring as the author runs out of steam or inspiration, and the fics turn into slightly tweaked rewrites of the canon material. I don't want to do that to you guys. In my opinion, if people want to read the canon story, then they'll go and read the manga or watch the anime: there's no point in reading a fanfiction when they could read the real deal. Of course, that's not to say that there aren't some fantastic AU fics out there that attempt to run through the whole canon timeline! I've read some of these too, and I'm eternally in awe of the people that can write them, and write them well. I have some ideas for my own long running AU, but only time will tell if I actually post any of them, but keep an eye out if you're interested in reading anything else of mine!

In other news, there will be a short sequel to this. I've already started writing it, and the first chapter is almost finished (I've heeded the request for longer chapters: it's at least 5000 words), so look forward to it! I wrote it because I realised that it would be a much better way of pointing out where this particular AU is heading than writing a boring author's note, and it's been pretty fun to write too. It's not as tragic as this fic, and Sasuke will be the main focus, rather than his older brother. I thought about writing a sequel from Itachi's point of view as he adapts to being a parent, but then I thought that it might be interesting to explore Sasuke's head space instead. 'A Different Decision' ended up being a lot about Itachi and the consequences that his decisions had during the critical time of the Uchiha Clan Massacre. In my opinion, Itachi's whole life was decided in the events leading up to and during the massacre. Sasuke's life, on the other hand, was decided in the events of the massacre yes, but also in the time directly afterwards, when he decided on the goal that he was going to follow for the rest of his life. The sequel will look at Sasuke's decisions, in particular the goal he chooses following the different outcome of the massacre this time around.

And wow, this ended up being a long author's note... sorry for my rambling, I'm an English student, so of course anything I write is going to end up long winded and full of bullshit. Congrats if you made it to the end of this note though!

**God... I almost forgot! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for reading until the end of 'A Different Decision'! Thank you even more if you favourited or followed this story, and a extra special thank you if you took time to post a review. You guys are all amazing :)**


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